HI : An Hybrid Adaptive Interleaved communication protocol for reliable data transfer in WSNs with mobile sinks

In this paper we deal with efficient communication protocols for reliable data collection in sparse sensor networks with mobile sinks. This process is quite critical since the interaction among mobile sinks gathering information and sensor nodes providing the data is generally short, unpredictable and affected by packet loss. Thus it necessitates extremely fast and reliable data exchange with minimal synchronization. In addition, since involved sensor nodes are energy-constrained devices, the communication protocol should be energy efficient. In this perspective, we define the hybrid adaptive interleaved data transfer protocol (HI), a hybrid protocol based on Reed Solomon codes. By means of simulations we show that the adoption of encoding techniques is beneficial to support reliable and energy-efficient data collection in WSNs with mobile sinks.